There is a certain mistrust
of feminism among leaders of the new mothers’ movement based on a shared perception that the priorities of second wave activism
left lower-income women and women with caregiving responsibilities
in the lurch, and the widespread impression
that, politically speaking, feminism is something of a non-starter
for the average American mom. But before we relegate feminism to
the scrap heap of dated ideas, I think it’s important to take
a closer look at the reasons Jesse Bernard’s bold predictions
about the future of motherhood missed the mark.

There’s no question the climate for motherhood has changed
since The Future of Motherhood was published in 1974—
the real problem is it hasn’t changed enough. The feminist
agenda to promote women’s economic independence was moderately
successful in clearing the way for women’s participation in
the professional and skilled labor force, which opened up important
work/life opportunities for mothers that never before existed.
Unfortunately, the full-scale invasion of male dominated professions
by highly qualified female workers was not enough to rehabilitate
deep-seated cultural attitudes about women, children and family.

Despite the fact 65 percent of American children live in households
where all parents are employed, today’s high-performance workplaces
are still structured as if every wage earner can rely on a full-time
caregiver to pick up the slack at home. And since traditional attitudes
about appropriate roles for men and women still exert a powerful
influence on the way we organize our families and workplaces, mothers
are much more likely than fathers to find themselves squeezed out
of full-time employment. Thanks to our cultural obsession with the
lives and lifestyles of affluent urbanites, high-profile media reporting
tends to concentrate on the work-life predicaments of exceptionally
well-educated mothers in upscale occupations. But the grim reality
is that the overall lack of workplace flexibility and the miserly
provisions of U.S. policies to support working
families take the heaviest toll on lower-income parents.

And if that’s not bad enough, we’re still stuck with
the myth of the omnipotent mother— the absurd (but tenacious) notion that children are perfectible, and mothers are
the only ones who can perfect them. It’s comforting—
not to mention politically expedient— to cling to the belief
that the optimal development of children depends solely on their
exposure to a specific quality and quantity of maternal devotion,
as if families’ access to resources and general social conditions
had no real bearing on children’s prospects. Regrettably,
both conservative and liberal thinkers have gotten away with advancing
the preposterous theory that if the nation’s errant mothers
would simply buckle down and do the job of motherhood the way it was meant to be done—
meaning a married, child-centered, resource intensive, selfless
sort of way— the country could substantially rid itself of a host
of pesky social problems, such as poverty, crime, substance abuse,
obesity and moral decay.

The idealization of conscientious mothering as a kind of universal
salve for what’s gone wrong with society has tremendous appeal—
both to those who benefit from the social and economic subordination
of women, and to mothers themselves. It’s immensely gratifying
to think the more mundane aspects of caregiving— the cooking,
the cleaning, the endless rounds of delivering and retrieving our
children from their assorted educational and recreational activities—
add up to something more than a sum of their parts, and it’s
reassuring to imagine that we have more control over the events
and encounters that shape our children’s lives than we probably
do. It’s uplifting to believe that all the work we put into
keeping our children safe and sound helps us cultivate specialized
skills and sensitivities we can use to change their world for the
better— either through our own direct actions or through the
positive contributions of our mindfully-reared children. It’s
wonderfully affirming to hear that mothers are irreplaceable, that
motherhood is “the most important job in the world,”
that diligent mothers acquire a deep and abiding wisdom about the
essential nature and needs of children— not just their own
children, but all children, everywhere— that those lacking
maternal experience can never hope to match.

When I’m in one of my gloomier moods, I tend to think of
the reflexive veneration of motherhood as a sort of consolation
prize— even though we live in a society that systematically
discounts mothers and the work they do, at least we have a reason
to feel good about ourselves. But I also appreciate that mothers
reprise these conventional sentiments because they genuinely feel
true to us— and because when it comes to expressing the depth
of our emotional attachment to our children and the personal meaning
of motherhood, it's the only type of language and logic our culture
is prepared to validate.

The trouble with this narrative of heroic motherhood is that it
flows from the exact same stream of ideology that neatly sections
the full range of human activity and emotional response into two
separate spheres— a great big one labeled “his”
and an itty-bitty one labeled “hers.” It’s part
of a carefully cultivated story that says women are particularly
well suited for caring work while men are better equipped for jobs
that demand strategy, strength and competition. And even though
we’ve finally reached a point in the history of human progress
where each side of the talent pool is willing to tolerate some incursion
from the other, we’re still operating from a worldview that
assumes the fundamental capacities of men and women are different
and fixed. This is why we just know women are better
suited to dependency, in all its variations, while men are made
for autonomy— and over the course of the last 300 years
(and probably very much longer) an exceptional amount of intellectual
energy has been devoted to explaining why this is and must always
be so. But remember, it’s just a story— one story out
of any number of stories we might tell about the nature of men and
women and how they live together.

When we talk about the practice of conscientious mothering in such
gendered terms, it sounds pretty good— good for mothers, good
for children, good for society. The major rub is that this timeworn
estimation of the innate abilities of the sexes underpins
a social order in which men still have considerably greater power
than women do, and this makes it practically impossible for women
to get the resources they need to preserve their own health and
well-being— and that of their children— without submitting
to some degree of subordination. Needless to say, this works to
the advantage of individuals and institutions with a vested
interest in retaining their present level of social power and privilege.
And clearly, it works to the disadvantage of women, children,
and everyone else who is excluded from the dominant group.

I’ll admit this analysis sounds disconcertingly theoretical
when the tender subject at hand is how mothers care for and about
their children. But it does offer an alternative explanation—
dare I say, a feminist explanation— for why mothers
work less, are paid less, and spend more hours doing unpaid child
care and housework than fathers do. Love and “choice”
may indeed factor into it, but I like to imagine that it’s
technically— if not politically— possible to create
a future of motherhood where women’s love and women’s
choices are fully compatible with women’s equality.

If the ultimate aim of the mothers’ movement is to advance
the status of women who mother, it will be counterproductive to
frame our appeals for policy reform in a manner that fails to challenge
traditional gender roles— or to demand better support and
services for mothers now and hope women’s equality will
“trickle down” later. When we valorize the work of mothering
as the most important job in the world, we inevitably reinforce
the same ideological system that devalues the work of caregiving
and limits women’s individual and political power— they
power they need to change the world for children or anyone else.
When we suggest the practice of mothering instills in all mothers
a refined moral sensibility or fundamental intuition about what
children need to thrive both at home and in the world, we relieve those other than mothers of the responsibility of ensuring
that our children inhabit a non-violent and caring society, and
we inadvertently strengthen distorted cultural assumptions about
who mothers are and what they do best. And if we truly want caregiving
to count in our society, we must be courageous enough to release
it from its secondary status as women’s work.